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I'm new to this forum but not new to Oldsmobiles. When I was a kid my Mother had a 1959 Olds *88 4 door as a grocery getter. We used to get her to stop the car at the top of our street, put the tranny in "S" and burn rubber in it. That was fun.
Then, my little brother owned a 1970 442 W-30 4 speed in the mid 70's.That car had some real pull! Please forgive the cracked old Polaroid photos, that's all he has!
Later, when my parents and he moved to Houston, Texas he bought another 1972 Cutlass 442 with a 455, Ram Air, 400 Turbo with Hurst Dual Gate, 10 Bolt Posi, PS, PB, PW and air conditioning from the original owner. It was Viking Blue with white stripes and beautiful. It was built in Arlington, Texas. Mom and Dad only had a 2 car garage so the Cutlass sat on the driveway and the paint started checking after a while. Later, in the late 80's he moved up here and brought it with him. He didn't have garage room so, again, the Cutlass sat outside......on a concrete driveway thank goodness. The weather took it's toll but it still ran great. After a while , working so much and having a wife and Daughter.....it just sat. I made him an offer and he accepted. I changed all the fluids and started it right up and moved it into my garage. I did a lot of restoration work on it over the next few years and started stripping the paint. My last few years before 2019 (when I retired) it also just sat and some of the stuff I did will have to be re-done but I'm getting it ready to move to the new detached 24 X 30 garage with a 2 post lift I had built behind my house. I'll be working on it and hope to have it done in a couple years, I bought the Viking Blue and High Performance clear lacquer 10 years ago to paint it with and a lot of NOS parts. It doesn't need to many parts though since it's only got 47,700 mile ORIGINAL on the odometer. Please excuse these as they are pictures of old pictures. This is the car as I just started to take trim off at the start of restoration. I did not rebuild the engine.
I think it was drag raced for a while in the Houston, Texas area. I had the carb rebuilt when I first bought it and the owner of Franks carb shop asked me if it had been drag raced and I said I didn't know but "WHY". He said that parts of the carb had "extra springs" to make it snap open faster and that one set of the carb butterflies had small holes drilled in them which he said was usually done if you had a non stock cam in the motor. I did find a drag racing rules book in the glove compartment I really hate that I have to re-do things but it is what it is. I'm pushing 70 so this will most likely be my last paint job/restoration. I have my Craig 8 track tape player with a slide in mount ready with a lot of 1970's best 8 track music ready for that day! Been an OCA member for years but somewhere along the line, they have lost me so I let my membership lapse. Looking forward to this site for good information in the future. It seems a lot more relevant to me than the OCA....but that's just me! Looking forward to many, many years on "Classic Oldsmobile"!!
Thank you,
Gary (OLE442)
Last edited by OLE442; Mar 21, 2019 at 11:26 AM.
Reason: additional info added
Welcome to the group... Thanks for sharing your story... Pushing 70 and still uses an 8Track, my kind of guy (I still have two 8Track players myself)...
